So I voted that a Wisconsinite should sign the petition if he (or she) opposes Walker and thinks the opponent will win. I don't think I fall in that category, so even though I've said in the past that I'll sign anything to get it on a ballot -- normally related to signing petitions for local races or referenda -- that suggests I should not sign the petition. We'll see, when push comes to shove, what happens.

Will the opponent even be known when the signing petition is circulated? Or does one only become known after the required signatures are collected? Kind of a Catch-22 in my opinion if you're signing the petition without knowing who's running against him.

"Althouse, the poll questions here are asinine, and you know it. Your readers are almost all conservative, including yourself, so you already know how they're going to answer the polls."

What's wrong with the questions? They frame options in a way that explains the problem, quite apart from how the answers come in. All web polls have the problem that they are only answered by the people who come to that website. I like the poll format for writing, because I like listing options and I think making it a poll is sometimes a cool presentation, as opposed to, say, a bullet-point list. Don't you see that? I mean, obviously (obvious to me anyway), the last poll is mostly telling a joke. The question "were you just lying?" is not a way to smoke out the liars, just a way to say, there could be lying.

Anyway, if you think the Althouse poll takers are too conservative, link to this poll from a liberal site and get some liberals over here to answer it.

And since you've offered an opinion about my capacity as a teacher, I'll add that you don't do well on my tests. I'm trying to sharpen you up, but you want to be dull. It's your choice. This blog is an elective.

The third poll question was silly, but I answered it anyway. No way would I vote in the first one, because I don't want to encourage this kind of bullshit chicanery by Democrats and unions. Progressives can't handle defeat and what's gone on in Wisconsin up to this time might just be a small sample of what is to come is the Democrats lose in '12.

I don’t think that Wisconsin voters should recall Governor Walker. If they really insist on having recall elections whenever they disagree with an elected officials policies or votes, they should just shorten the term of office to two years and be done with it. Otherwise, barring an impeachable offense or resignation, the appropriate mechanism for replacing an elected official is the next regularly scheduled election.

Is this poll related to the "conspiracy" that Althouse referred to last month...politicians acting one way in order to affect a certain outcome? Republicans secretly hoping that there is a recall of Walker, just so they can pummel the Dems in a forced runoff?

"Is this poll related to the "conspiracy" that Althouse referred to last month...politicians acting one way in order to affect a certain outcome? Republicans secretly hoping that there is a recall of Walker, just so they can pummel the Dems in a forced runoff?"

Referenda are anti-republic and pro-democratic (just to be clear, I intentionally used lower case 'r' and 'd' to signify forms of government - not political party).

As Plato wrote 2500 years ago, pure democracies are unsustainable because they're effectively mob rule.

I'm not opposed to referenda per se, but the threshhold to get an initiative on the ballot needs to be extraordinarily high to ensure they are only used for truly exceptional and extraordinary measures.

Wisonsin's thresshold is too low. Look at the mess California's absurdly low criteria for getting referenda on the ballot has led to.